The invitation is to weave these two journeys together. Growing up helps bring tenderness to my own humanity, while waking up reminds me that my identity is larger than the struggles I face. Together, they invite a way of being that is both deeply human and gently transcendent.

In today's Western world, there can be a marked separation between spirituality and religion. Public opinion now privileges 'spirituality' above 'religion,' with the latter being regarded with a good deal of suspicion. 'Spirituality', as the term is used today, refers to the personal pursuit of the sacred. 'Religion', however, carries the unfortunate connotations of moralism, piety and hypocrisy. This has been exasperated by recent unearthed widespread sexual abuse in Christi

In our contemporary world, we understand that psychological growth and spiritual growth are intricately linked. A mature relationship with the divine demands, and is supported by, a striving for psychological wholeness. This has also long been understood by the great spiritual guides of the past. John Calvin in 1536 said: 'There is no deep knowing of God without a deep knowing of self, and no deep knowing of self without a deep knowing of God.' And his contemporary from a ve

If we are a follower of a spiritual path then our images of God (or the sacred) are key. When we try to pray, we must have some idea of God in our minds, and this idea will influence how we pray and whether we pray. It will also influence our behaviour and ethics, often without our conscious awareness. But our images of God are not the same as our ideas about God. Images are pictures not abstract ideas; they are a powerful combination of thoughts and feelings loaded with pot

Having looked at some of the benefits and challenges of our emotions in the spiritual life and journey, we can now explore some practical ancient ways of meditative prayer to facilitate this process. The key is to find, and rest in, a place of undefended awareness where we can open to the divine with intention of heart in the midst of our emotional turmoil; returning again and again to the unconditional divine embrace that offers us this freedom of heart. So, below, I explor

Spiritual pathology describes how we can distort and undermine our spiritual path and its practices, because of our own deep unresolved inner emotional wounds and issues. I have written in ' Spiritual Life and the Shadow ' how part of our unconscious self - the Shadow - can influence us in often unrecognised ways. We can take this a step further to understand how it can also influence the way we view and distort our chosen spiritual path and its practice; the delusions we ca

In our Western world many people suffer from an inability to live with paradox and contradiction. We have lost touch with paradoxical, mystical or contemplative thinking in an education system with its basis in formal laws of logic and linearity, which has an unfortunate tendency to reinforce either/ or dualistic thinking. The startling idea that truth can be multilayered, unpredictable and contradictory is generally not a part of our modern Western world. Yet many of our gre

Rob Preece, a Buddhist spiritual mentor I am privileged to know, recently wrote a book entitled 'The Wisdom of Imperfection.' An excellent book understanding that, at heart, the spiritual journey involves encompassing all that we are, not a striving for a state of perfection, and encouraging us to have compassion on our vulnerability and fallibility as we travel our path. But this is not a new idea, although it is one we have great need of continually revisiting. In the Chr

Spiritual bypassing, a term coined by psychologist John Welwood in 1983, is the use of spiritual beliefs and practices to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs. It is pervasive in our culture - both personally and collectively - where we don't have much tolerance or acquired skill to face our pain, preferring instead a numbing analgesic, particularly if it can be seemingly legitimized by 'higher' spiritual goals and values. The c

Transformation of our emotion life remains one of the greatest challenges confronting us on our spiritual path. Indeed, perhaps in exasperation, many historical strands of Christianity relegated feelings to an inferior and suspect status, often seeing them as manifestations of female weakness far less trustworthy and more 'primitive' than 'male' rational powers. Strong feelings needed to be muted for fear of muddying objectivity, with 'dispassion' being seen as somehow super